The Makings Of A Happy Ending
by MsOutAndAbout
Summary: The story of Sherlock and John, married couple, discussing children (when just yesterday Sherlock was busy ruining John's dates with Sarah!), and how everything, the kiss, the marriage, the dog, just sort of...happened.


It just happened, completely by accident. They were in the kitchen. Sherlock was looking through a microscope at some blood platelets, but there was a spot on the slide, and he couldn't tell if it was an irregularity in the sample or an imperfection on the slide cover.

He adjusted the focus but still couldn't tell. Finally he heaved a sigh.

"Damn spot."

John, who was making tea, started giggling. "Very funny."

This reaction was unexpected, and prompted Sherlock to look up from his microscope. "What's funny?"

"You said damn spot. As in 'out, out, damn spot.' The Scottish play."

Sherlock snorted and looked back into the microscope, realizing that this was one of those things that people expected him to know and too embarrassed to admit that he didn't. "I'm sure Scotland has many plays," he pointed out.

There was a long pause before John burst out into true guffaws. "You have no clue what I'm talking about, do you?"

"I certainly do."

"You don't! You're blushing."

"Fine!" Sherlock sat up to glare at John. "What are you talking about, then?"

"Macbeth." John was laughing so hard that he could barely speak.

"Why didn't you call it that, then? For god's sake, that wasn't even written by a Scotsman."

For some reason, though perfectly true, this statement sent John into fresh peals of laughter. It took him a full minute (more) to calm down. Sherlock rolled his eyes. Honestly, for all that John was incredible, sometimes he could act positively average.

Eventually John stopped laughing, though bursts of giggles continued to escape him. He looked at Sherlock, still giggling, red in the face, and said, "Oh god, Sherlock, I love you."

Even Sherlock knew that confessions like that tended to stop a conversation dead in its tracks, and this conversation was no exception. He froze in his seat.

John flushed a deeper red. "I didn't- I mean…" He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Oh bugger," he said sadly. "It really is bad luck."

With that, he took his cup of tea and retreated to his room. It almost made Sherlock smile. Advance and retreat, like any good soldier. Sherlock looked up at the ceiling.

"I love you, too, John," he bellowed. "Just in case you didn't know."

Footsteps thumping down the stairs, then John was right in front of him.

"…what?"

"I said I love you, too, John," Sherlock replied, annoyance tingeing his voice as he finally decided to just scrap the slide and prepare a new one. "If you haven't figured that out by now then your observational skills truly are hopeless."

John pulled the box of slide covers out of Sherlock's reach. "Sherlock, put that away."

"Why? An interruption now could compromise all the work I've done so far on sickle cell anemia."

John pulled Sherlock's jaw up and kissed him.

In the end, that kiss (and the subsequent hour in bed that was perhaps ill-timed but very rewarding) ruined the findings on sickle cell anemia as well as the box of slide covers, which ended up being thrown all over the floor by John, so he could have both hands free to bury in Sherlock's hair. Sherlock maintained that if John had had more concentration and coordination the box of slide covers wouldn't have wound up covered in dirt on the floor. John maintained that the slide covers would have survived their trip to the floor had Sherlock ever bothered learning what a vacuum was used for.

Sherlock replied that he knew exactly what a vacuum was used for, thank you, and that it wasn't his fault that they weren't worth using.

John pointed out that it was apparently worth at least a box of slide covers, and got thoroughly ignored for his troubles.

* * *

With that, surprisingly little changed.

Sherlock spent more time in bed, though no more time asleep, and after the second or third awkward explanation to the officers at New Scotland Yard John had learned how easily Sherlock bruised, and not to suck kisses, even gentle ones, so high on his neck that his scarf wouldn't cover them (he also became endlessly grateful for Sherlock's fondness for scarves). Sherlock, similarly, learned that John barely bruised at all, and that if he tried too hard to create bruises he would wind up accidentally drawing blood and John would become very cross indeed. The upstairs bedroom was slowly emptied of John's possessions and was soon going completely unused. They offered it back to Mrs. Hudson to rent out, but she said, quite sensibly, that nobody would want to rent one bedroom with no kitchen or bathroom, underneath which explosions occurred frighteningly regularly, and that they may as well keep it. Sherlock rarely stopped for sex during cases, but because so few cases lasted more than 48 hours it wasn't a problem. Sherlock also seemed to be better able to stand the times between cases, better able to stand peace and quiet.

John asked him why this was once, but Sherlock just grunted and wrangled a screech out of his violin.

* * *

The first major change occurred on their one year anniversary. John, after much thought and planning, pulled a few strings at the surgery to get Sherlock a set of pneumonia-infected lungs and bought him a box of slide covers, in reference to the set that got wrecked the year before.

Sherlock waited for John to walk out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel and whipped a small box at him.

"If you want it," he said, turning his back and holding onto the edge of the counter so hard his knuckles turned white. "If you don't, don't worry. I can find something different, you're very easy to shop for. I have multiple ideas now in fact, there are many things I'm sure you would like…"

John went ahead and opened the box while Sherlock prattled on. Inside was a plain silver band.

Not silver, he realized – probably titanium. Sherlock would have no appreciation for gold or any other soft metal. Inside, 'Yours always, -SH' was engraved.

John walked over to Sherlock, who had stopped talking and seemed to be trying very hard just to breathe, and kissed him, then handed the box back.

"Ask me properly, you berk, so that I can say yes."

"Why don't you just say yes now?"

"Because when people ask how we got engaged, I don't want to tell them that I was walking around naked when a box containing an engagement ring was launched at my skull."

"Not at your skull. At eye level. And you're wearing a towel. And it's a wedding ring, honestly, John, pay attention."

"Sherlock!"

Sherlock sounded a little like he was choking when he stared out the window and scraped out "Marry me?"

John almost yelled "yes!" as he yanked Sherlock's hands off the counter and pushed him up against the counter to kiss him properly. As he did, he knocked the box of slide covers down.

Sherlock pulled away to watch as the little plastic squares slid across the floor. "That's two boxes you owe me now."

John grinned. "It'll be your wedding present."

This time they spent longer than an hour in bed.

* * *

They didn't go on an official honeymoon, though Sherlock did take a case in Rome shortly after the wedding. Lestrade was shocked by the omission. John pointed out that a week in a hotel room with Sherlock was not the way to start a marriage if one wanted it to be successful; an optimist would expect that week to end in divorce, a pessimist, in murder.

"So you figured you'd just start with the murder?" asked Lestrade.

John laughed. "Something like that, yeah."

* * *

Six months into their marriage, Harry ended up adopting a dog and promptly forgot that it existed. John went over to visit one day to find a very skinny mutt and a mildly drunk Harry.

"Where did you get a dog?"

Harry shrugged. "Dunno. One of my mates brought him over, wanted to see if we could get him drunk. Guess he forgot him here."

"Did you get the dog drunk?"

"Nah. Thing's not stupid, I'll give him that. Got ourselves pretty pissed though."

John chose not to reflect on the apparent intelligence of the people responsible for the dog. Instead he scratched the dog between the ears and, once he had decided that it was even-tempered and flea-free, he turned to Harry and said, "Listen, do you actually want the dog, or would you prefer that someone else adopt it?"

Harry shrugged. "Nah, I don't really want it, but who would want that mangy thi- oh, my, god, you want the dog," she finished, laughing. "Take it, then. Honestly, John, you've always been way too nice."

John just shrugged and tied a leash for the dog out of some old Christmas ribbon. 'Too nice' was Harry's most common complaint of John, with 'so mean' as a close second.

After a check-up at the vet, lots of teasing about dogs being 'practice children' from the officers at Scotland Yard, and one quite fantastic but entirely contrived tantrum from Sherlock, the dog settled in well at Baker Street, and started gaining weight. After a week of the poor thing bearing the brunt of Sherlock's work with sedatives, John decided to name it Gladstone in honour of Sherlock's delight in getting it stoned. He didn't tell that part to Sherlock, of course, and Sherlock decided that he liked the name, especially because the political ties to it would drive Mycroft batty.

* * *

It was another year (another spectacular year, another year full of laughter and crime scenes and really good sex) before John caught Sherlock making faces at a baby in the supermarket.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?"

Sherlock straightened up and fought valiantly to keep the red off his cheeks. "Lovely language to use in front of a baby, John."

"Just tell me, instead of being a wanker."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Social experiment. Studies have found that infants can understand a surprising array of facial expressions and gestures, so you should really stop frowning like that."

"Oh…kay," John said slowly.

Sherlock didn't say a word all the way home. After John had finished putting away the groceries and Sherlock had spent ten minutes staring at the wall, John walked over and sat on Sherlock's knees (and oh, Christ, sitting on Sherlock's bony knees _hurt_).

"Sherlock," he said, "just so you know… I would- even though you might not- it's just-" he cleared his throat and started again. "It's just that I want to know what you're thinking, what you want – even if it's not what I want. If you wanted… kids, or something, I would like for you to tell me."

Sherlock made an odd little choking noise, but didn't say anything.

"Sherlock, really," said John. "What's on your mind? You'll have to tell me sooner or later, after all."

"No, John, I won't. It's a bad idea."

"I didn't think you had bad ideas."

"Of course I have bad ideas. The difference between myself and the general population is that I don't vocalize my bad ideas, a trend that I intend to continue now."

John swallowed a sigh. The best way to wrangle information out of Sherlock when he was like this was to guess and let him keep scoffing until you hit on the right one, when his eyes would go unfocused and the skin underneath his left eye would jump. He would still scoff, though.

"Are you sick?"

"Pfft."

"Lestrade do something stupid?"

Rolled eyes.

"Mycroft tried to sneak security cameras into the flat?"

Clenched teeth.

"You want another dog?"

"Ugh."

"You want kids?" Even John was a little surprised to hear himself say that, though as soon as he did, he could see it. He could see a small black-haired child riding on Sherlock's shoulders (so long as it wasn't afraid of heights), laughing and pointing at something in the distance.

"Tsh." But sure enough, the skin under his left eye twitched.

John felt his eyes go wide. "Really? You want kids? The tiny little human beings that eventually grow into normally sized ones?"

"They aren't small humans, John, they just aren't fully developed ones. Little people could be considered small human beings, but I certainly don't want one of those."

"Sherlock, please just answer the question."

Sherlock cleared his throat. "Fine. Yes, the thought occurred, but John, even you must admit that I would make a terrible father." Sherlock's eyes followed Gladstone as he stumbled through the living room, shaking off the effects of whatever new sedative Sherlock had invented. "I know you named the dog Gladstone because I keep drugging him, by the way."

"I hope that's not why you keep drugging him," John muttered, then sat up straighter and looked Sherlock in the eye. "Please, please don't tell me that you would care for a child the same way you would do a dog."

"I'm not stupid, John."

"No, you're not," John laughed. "You are many things, but you're not that."

Sherlock smiled sadly at that, and John sighed again.

"Look, if we decide that we want kids, then obviously, we have a lot to talk about. But for the record, I think that you would make a brilliant father. And I certainly know that you wouldn't make a bad one."

"You can't possibly have come to that conclusion logically."

"Of course I could. Because if you were being a shit father to some kid, I would come kick your arse."

Sherlock bit his lip to keep from smiling. "Charming."

"And effective," answered John. "I'm a double threat."

Sherlock did crack a smile at that.

* * *

_There will be a sequel to this story, posted as a 2nd chapter, although both this story and the sequel could be read alone ^_^ _


End file.
